


Coffee is a way of stealing time

by middlemarch



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV), All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Baristas, Coffee, Conversations, Dreams, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gift Giving, Humor, Male Friendship, Wine, Witches, because THESE TWO, pastry, references to The Thorn Birds, scientists - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-27 19:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20413189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Miriam had never steered him wrong before. Well, there was that one time, but he'd had it coming. He ignored the self-conscious pots of rosemary and thyme by the front door and the jingle of the bell as he walked in.





	1. Chapter 1

Dr. Matthew Clairmont would emphatically have preferred a wine bar, given the status of his experimental data and the hour, but his favorite one was closed for renovations and he knew from colossally disappointing experience that the other three near his lab had never offered a red that wasn’t three-quarters of the way turned to vinegar. He had an above average Domaine Leroy Musigny waiting at his flat, almost as good as the sommeliers thought, but that was forty minutes away via the Tube. Miriam had mentioned the coffee-shop around the corner was under new management, which meant she’d gone and found it worthwhile. It was as close to praise as she was likely to come. Matthew took a breath, grimacing a little at the sign above the awning, and walked in. There was a line, not out the door but not insignificant. It gave him a chance to read the chalkboard sign listing the drinks as if he’d choose anything but an espresso.

“Hello, welcome to The Witches Brew. I’m Diana. What can I get for you today?” 

The barista asking had her bright blonde hair loosely secured without any artifice, which showed her cheekbones to advantage. Her apron was seemingly made of burlap, protecting a white blouse whose sleeves she’d rolled up. He glimpsed a tattoo at her wrist, the Monas Hieroglyphica, somehow inked in both indigo and gold on her fair skin.

“An espresso,” he said.

“For here or to go?” Diana said. She wasn’t wearing a name-tag and he wondered if that meant she was the new management. A second barista at the second register was clearly identified as “Gillian” in an obnoxiously Gothic font lettered on what must be an attempt at parchment.

“For here.”

“And can I get you anything with it? Some biscotti or a sticky bun? They’re all made on-site by our pastry chef Em,” Diana said.

“No thank you. Just the coffee. I don’t care much for sweets,” Matthew said.

“Ah, that’s too bad,” Diana said. She had blue eyes, a direct gaze. He thought of hyacinths in his mother’s garden, dismissed the image as trite except that he recognized it as being inarguably true. 

“Why? Why is it too bad?” he asked, not quite understand why he was engaging her instead of giving her every signal that she should just make the damn coffee and ring up the sale. 

“Because you’re probably missing out on the ones that turn savory. The ones that are just sweet enough,” she said.


	2. Chapter 2

“That man you fancy left a five hundred euro note, Diana,” Gillian said. 

“What?” 

Diana wasn’t sure what she was so shocked by—the money, too much to be considered even the most exorbitant tip, possibly a signal that Matthew thought her coffee-shop was in dire straits, or Gillian’s blithe description of Matthew as “that man you fancy.” 

“It’s a tidy little sum, isn’t it? A couple of pounds of Kopi Luwak or something to put by for a rainy day. Though business is usually better on a rainy day,” Gillian mused. She squinted her eyes a little, an expression Diana was familiar with though she’d never mentioned how unflattering it was. “Or are you asking who? Our new, most frequent customer, the one who looks like a cross between an Oxford don and a sexy creature of the night. With the voice like black velvet. He can nibble at me anytime.”

“I wasn’t—I know who you meant, I know who Matthew is,” Diana said.

“Matthew, huh? I would have guessed Sebastien or Gabriel. Mmm, Gabriel, like a wicked, dark angel, a wicked, dark, dirty angel,” Gillian replied, smiling to herself.

“Gillian!”

“What, Diana? It’s not a crime to appreciate a handsome man. And he’s very handsome. If it turns out he’s rich **and** generous, what’s wrong with that? Unless there are strings attached, ones I don’t know about…”

“What are you trying to suggest, Gillian?” Diana heard herself sputtering. It wasn’t an attractive sound. 

“Nothing. Maybe. Maybe five hundred euros is nothing to him. Or maybe he feels he owes you for something,” Gillian said. Diana reminded herself of the long years of their friendship, the time Gillian brought over bone broth and the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice when she had the flu. Gillian was willing to work late and hadn’t complained when Diana had had to delay her first paycheck. It was just barely enough to balance out the current intimation.

“He doesn’t owe me for anything. He’s just a customer,” Diana said.

“Oh, Diana. Sweetie. He’s not _just_ anything. And he’s definitely not just a customer. Hell, right now he might qualify as part-owner,” Gillian said.

“We’re doing fine,” Diana said. “I can take care of myself and this coffee-shop. It’s not what I planned to do, but I can do it.”

“Of course you can. Doesn’t mean you should. If you’d rather be helped by the gorgeous Matthew and not wrinkly old Peter Knox and his quote-unquote investment proposal, more power to you,” Gillian said.

“What am I going to say the next time he comes it?” Diana said, obviously meaning Matthew and no one else. Matthew had green eyes, dark like agate, sometimes grey and sometimes a twilit blue. He had very long eyelashes and the most expressive mouth. What in heaven’s name was she going to say to him, when he’d be looking at her the whole time?

“You can ask him what this means,” Gillian said, handing Diana a small gold coin, the edges blurred, pressed with a woman’s profile, the hint of a coronet. “It was on top of the euro, like a paperweight.”

“Fuck. Fucking fuck, fuck,” Diana muttered. It was an old coin, warm from Gillian’s hand, something she could never ignore. Matthew had won this round, as he’d intended.

“I’d start by bringing him a coffee. And an anise biscotti. Then you can get to fucking,” Gillian said.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sept-Tours is open again, Matthew. You can get a proper glass of wine,” Miriam said. She was smiling, a lovely, feline smile, because the funding she wanted had come through and there was the promise of a bottle of a 2015 Sassicaia. 

“I don’t think I will tonight, Miri,” Matthew said, keeping half his focus on his screen, trying to parse the significance of the last data-set.

“So, what’s today’s excuse?” she said, her mirth evident. She crossed her legs in her knee-high boots for good measure. Marcus had left early, so she wasn’t trying to maintain her professional persona.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been positively haunting that coffee-shop. I’ve been there. It’s fine, they make a good latte, but at the end of the day, it’s just a coffee-shop. Who wants a cup of coffee in a world of red wine? What’s the lure? It can’t be the décor,” Miriam said, wrinkling her nose. Like him, she was not enamored of the abundance of dried flowers but he didn’t mind the tea-lights, little pools of gold when it was dusk.

“I never said I was going there,” he replied.

“Well, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” he said. Miriam laughed. It had been a long time since he’d heard her sound like that, it was a rarity since Bertrand died. He knew better than to say anything like that to her; she’d either tear him to shreds or stalk out, pivoting on the four inch heel of her boot like a ballerina en pointe.

“What?”

“Oh, Mattie, you’re such a terrible liar. Just abysmal. Atrocious,” she said, actually wiping tears from her eyes. He appreciated her amusement but not being the cause of it.

“I’m not lying,” he said.

“Maybe you’re not lying to me. Maybe you’re lying to yourself,” she offered.

“Why are you so convinced I’m not telling the truth?” he said.

“First of all, lying and not telling the truth are not the same things. Not at all and I think you know that,” she said. They’d worked together for ages and he could think of a dozen situations she might be referring to. Civetot and then, Eisenstadt…

“Point taken. But what’s the second reason?”

“I can positively smell it on you,” she laughed again. “It’s obvious, to someone to knows you well. I think I can say that I do.”

“I’m not planning to go to see her tonight,” Matthew admitted.

“The barista with the tattoo,” Miriam said. She kindly didn’t not comment on how he’d abandoned any pretense of the coffee being the pull. Since that first day, the first time he’d seen her, it had been Diana who attracted him, more than any other woman he could recall. More than Juliette.

“Yes. Diana,” he said.

“Does she know?”

“Does she know what?”

“What a bad liar you are. Has she figured it out yet?” Miriam asked.

“How the fuck would I know that, Miri?”

“Oh, come to Sept-Tours with me, Mattie. You clearly need a libation first, before you see her.”

“I said, I’m not planning to see her,” Matthew repeated. Diana, with her thoughtful blue eyes and her graceful hands, her bright hair tied back always so he longed to see it fall around her face.

“Not planning is not the same as not seeing,” Miriam said. She leaned over, patted him gently on the shoulder. Even through his lab-coat and button-down, he could feel how cold her hands were, how slender. 

“Fine. All right. I’ll have a glass of wine with you first,” he said.

“Try not to sound too surly about it. I’m letting you taste that Sassicaia and I’ve been waiting six months for that bottle. **You’re** not doing **me** a favor, Mattie.”


	4. Chapter 4

His lips were at her neck, his tongue tracing the course of her carotid, and Diana was about to explode. Or expire or literally be transformed into flame because Matthew’s deliberate touch, the small sounds he made as he tasted her were so fucking erotic, she couldn’t bear it.

“_Ma vaillante fille_,” he murmured against her skin. She was panting, breathy little gasps of frustration and delight and want, and some distant part of herself was embarrassed by it. Just for a moment, the moment it took for him to take hold of her waist with a hand, to growl low in his throat. He was on her, pressed her back against the wall or a table, she couldn’t quite tell, though there was the rich smell of coffee, of vanilla syrup and cloves. He was hard against her and she moaned, felt what it did to him, felt his teeth. What color would his eyes be when she looked at him?

“So beautiful, I like it, I like to hear you,” he said, each word more strained than the last. “Say my name, say it…”

“Matthew!” she cried out. And woke up. As she had for the fourth time this week, the flowered sheets tangled around her waist, her tank top riding up and her face pressed into the pillow. She could see him if she closed her eyes, his green eyes and his dark hair tousled. She could smell him and she shouldn’t be able to. Vetiver and clove, Burgundy and fresh linen. Desire and something else, something that had to remain nameless because it was insane, nonsensical, overwhelming. She saw it in his eyes when he looked at her and when he looked away. She saw in the mirror when she woke up from another dream, her hair wild around her face, her cheeks flushed. She glowed with it.

The gold coin sat in the small china dish she kept her pearl studs in and the key to her parents’ old house. She picked it up before she went to sleep at night to study the woman’s profile, to wonder if she’d been a queen or an empress. What did the coin mean to Matthew and what did he want it to mean to her? She wanted to ask him and she wanted to listen to him explain, cogent and thoughtful. And she wanted to hear how he trailed off at the end, uncertain of her. He was never unsure when she dreamt of him but during the day, during the twilight and the evenings when he sat in her shop, there could be a diffidence about him. 

The next time she saw him, she would take his free hand where it lay on the table and turn it over, place the coin in the center of his palm. He’d never expect it and there would be a moment when she could divine the truth. She’d also know what it felt like to touch his skin, to hear him hold his breath. She’d have a chance to ask him a question.

“Why?”


	5. Chapter 5

“Tell me why,” Hamish said.

“Because it’s an unusual opportunity,” Matthew said. Hamish looked unimpressed but was clearly still listening. Matthew had known him long enough to know when his friend had tuned out and was internally recasting “The Thorn Birds.” He had an implacable conviction about James Norton as Father Ralph that Matthew had never found entirely persuasive but then, he wasn’t really a fan full stop. This had been the subject of another lengthy, recursive conversation, Matthew Clairmont’s failure to engage in pop culture. Hamish enjoyed that one tremendously, so Matthew let it come up regularly.

“No. Tell me why,” Hamish said.

“Because it will intrigue you, the juxtaposition of kitsch and the occult, the domestic and the paranormal,” Matthew said. He hadn’t discovered yet how much Diana had changed when she took over the management and how much she had kept. She liked the grandmother clock and the exposed stone hearth, she’d mentioned that, but the prisms that hung in front of the side window, splattering the tables with rainbows—were those her choice? What about the old maps haphazardly framed, haphazardly hung?

“No. Tell me why, Matt. I’ve got all day but I don’t think you have,” Hamish said. He crossed his ankles to underscore the point. His socks were a vivid salmon, spotted with teal, like a psychedelic trout. Matthew had given them to Hamish for his birthday a few years ago and they looked just as new as when Hamish had unwrapped them from the tissue paper.

“Because of Diana. The barista, the owner. Honestly, Hamish, she’s astonishing. She’s clever and funny, she’s full of courage,” Matthew admitted, letting himself say it aloud. There was something utterly compelling about the woman, bewitching and powerful, something beyond serendipity. 

“Was that so hard?”

“Hard enough,” Matthew said.

“Maybe it should be-- telling the truth. Or beginning to,” Hamish said. “If I’m going as some fucked-up wingman with you, I’d like to know what’s at stake. And before you say it, it’s accurate. It’s fucked-up, because you’re acting like you’re Cyrano de Bergerac, and I’m totally the wingman because I don’t think I’d convince a Muppet that I’m an angel investor.”

“Hamish,” Matthew protested weakly. 

“It’s all right, Matt. I can’t remember the last time you asked me for a favor. And you’ve made me curious about this woman. I could do with a decent cappuccino.”

“Thank you.” 

“Why don’t you wait and see if it helps. Having me there. No guarantees on that score whereas I’m very likely getting a free coffee **and** the limitless pleasure of watching Dr. Matthew Clairmont try to flirt,” Hamish said. “I mean, I understood you were paying for the coffee, right?”

“Of course. And all the saffron buns you can eat. She uses real saffron.”

“You better find an actual angel investor then. Saffron’s bloody expensive,” Hamish said.

“But worth it,” Matthew said softly. “She’s worth it.”


	6. Chapter 6

It turned out that Diana wasn’t there the night Matthew went to Witches Brew with Hamish. It turned out he missed her again the next night, the other woman, Gillian according to her name-tag, serving him a perfectly adequate cup of coffee that might as well have been pigswill without Diana’s hand setting down the over-sized saucer. Without her hyacinth blue eyes looking to see something in him he kept concealed from everyone else.

It turned out he was the only one left in the coffee-shop when she finally spoke to him again. 

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

“What do I have to say for myself?” he repeated, baffled. And also surpassingly, illogically happy, to see her hand on his cup, to catch the scent of her perfume—honey and incense and something green, like a willow trailing its leaves in the water.

“I donated that money. That you left,” Diana said. Each word was clipped and the saucer had struck the table with enough force to make the crema tremble. He looked up at her and saw her flushed cheeks, how she’d drawn her brows together. He thought of arguing, of saying _But that was for you, a gift, something to make this easier_ and thought of how she might respond. How she might destroy him with a sharp remark or without any comment at all, her eyes assessing him and finding him beneath her regard. 

“And the coin?” he said instead because she hadn’t mentioned it and it wouldn’t be as easy to get rid of. Because it would need to be exchanged first and she’d have to hold it in her hand, the gold warming to her touch. To be held in her palm, something he’d held in his, a token, a talisman. 

“That’s different,” she said, flustered now. What was it about the coin that she’d liked? That she hadn’t been willing to let go of?

“It’s still money. It’s worth a great deal, more than the cash, I should think,” he said, boxing her in but keeping his face as expressionless as he could.

“As you say, it’s worth a great deal. I haven’t decided yet what to do about it.”

_Keep it. Sell it. Have it melted down and recast as a ring, whatever ornament you will wear against your skin. Against your heart_. He didn’t say any of it but he was sure she had seen something in his eyes. Some hopefulness or hopelessness, the desire that kept him from sleeping deeply, the strange, immeasurable devotion she’d inspired.

“Your coffee is getting cold. It’s a shame to waste it,” she said. He looked at her, willing her to speak again. He was still as a stone except for the beating of his heart, like the tolling of a great iron bell.

“It’s a shame to waste it, Matthew,” she repeated. 

“I wanted to give you something. I wanted to help you,” he said.

“I know. I don’t know why you thought I needed help,” she answered.

“Because of your eyes. Because of your voice, because of the ledger and the book you wanted to read more,” he said, reminding her of the day she’d had the account book splayed open next to a fat, musty medieval volume, nothing as well-known as Chaucer, not even Matthew Paris. Her eyes had strayed to it, again and again, as she poured and stirred and smiled at this customer and the next.

“You must ask people what they want. What they feel,” she said, looking at him steadily. “However much you don’t want to, you have to ask me before you do something like that.”

“You’d give me an answer, an honest one?”

“I might. I might if you ask first. And finish your coffee,” she said. She moved, let her hand graze his in a way they could both ignore if they wanted. As if it hadn’t felt like fire and ice, like the greatest relief, the greatest temptation, the first, overwhelming caress. How could her ringless hand feel that way, touching his so lightly? Was he bewitched?

“And then?”

“And then we’ll see,” she said. “You’re quite clever, I should think. My answer would only be the beginning.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know there's clamoring for new content and that people really seem to prefer visuals and smut (!), but I don't ever feel like it's a real fandom until you have some solid coffee-shop AU going.
> 
> Monas Hieroglyphica is an alchemical sign created by John Dee.
> 
> Matthew is still a wine snob. I found that wine on a list of 12 French wines to try before you die.
> 
> The title is from Terry Practchett.


End file.
